Hype Song of the Month // Beyoné All Night

Beyoncé proves she is still ruling the pop world with the release of her fourth standalone video for her track All Night, taken off her stunning masterpiece Lemonade. The Diplo-produced ballad isn’t a breathtakingly beautiful song alone, it is also the centerpiece that holds Queen Bey’s groundbreaking visual LP together. While much of Lemonade seems to speak to a broader experience of Afro-American women, All Night appears to be all about Beyoncé and Jay-Z, delivering heartwarming home video footage of them hanging out on the streets, dancing, kissing, and spending family time with Blue Ivy. Without All Night’s weary words of reconciliation, Lemonade would rather be a tale of love lost, anger and mistrust instead of redemption. Musically, All Night builds around a bare skeleton of reggae guitars and slinky funk bass, evolving into a warm, sidling love song buoyed by Outkast-sampling horns and Beyoncé’s soulful vocals. All Night provides a peaceful coda to a noteworthy year and serves as a perfect reminder of Bey’s top spot on year-end lists.

Snapped on Kurfürstendamm // The Prada Man

Fahtin on Leibnizstraße // The Mourning after

The mourning after: Fashion’s longstanding love affair with black makes us often forget that the colour is still a strong statement of mourning. Fahtin has lost a close relative quite recently and wears black to express her grief over the sad loss of a loved one.

20 Hype House Tracks of 2016 // Tonight We’re Gonna Party like It’s …

No one takes a journey through life without having to face the loss of someone or something dear. After all, 2016 seemed to be more savage than the years before. David Bowie was the first of many whiplashes to go down, for many more to come. One tweet said losing Bowie felt “like we lost something elemental, as if an colour is gone.” I don’t know what colour it could be that would have vanished with Bowie, because he was the shades of so many colours. The news of Prince’s swift and sudden passing on April 21 left the world appalled as fans and celebrities reacted with remarks of sorrow and devastation. The feeling of a lost colour is mutual when discussing Prince and his majestic tones of purple, which were, quite contrary to losing them, on display more than ever shortly after his death. No other death of an artist pulled a bigger plug out of me than that of Prince, mainly because his impact on my young adulthood had carried such extraordinary force.

Since Prince’s passing I have turned away from handcrafted pop or rock and roll in its traditional sense. The void Prince left brought me back to house music, to which his music once had led me instinctively, because it was an essential notion in his own universe of styles: make people party, move and dance. After Prince’s death, his apocalyptic funk of 1999 still offers a lot of lessons: In a year of Brexit, Trump for president, the Orlando shooting, the Nice tragedy, excesses of diminishing democratic privileges in Turkey and Russia, the song spits in the face of fear of certain and total destruction and tells you what to do: Live! While dancing is a crucial act of life, we have to return to the clubs, raves and dance halls and “party like it’s 1999.” Here’s a list of this year’s house tracks that were indispensable dj tools for a rampant night out in order to follow Prince’s advice.

Although LIV have unveiled only two songs so far, the shimmering folk-pop yearner Wings of Love and the six minute synth-driven gem Dream Awake, these are assuredly part of something bigger. Musically, the two beautiful songs offer a welcome opportunity to ring in a tough year’s end with a true act of contemplation. Naturalistic, back-to-roots style, along with a fair dose of quasi-hippie mysticism and Fleedwood Mac influence, Li’s signature vocals come with trademark ease, yet with considerable pop craft.

Li conceives LIV as an art installation and a sort of social commentary, a reflection on a dismissed generation. “Love is the only thing that will remain after we’re gone. Even when you die the only thing you can ask yourself is, ‘Did I love enough?'” Lykke stated in a Pitchfork interview quite recently.

Zhanna Romashka on Place Vendôme // In strong Colours she trusts

Fashion Now // The World of cosmopolitan Style

If it’s good enough for Paris Hilton, who is rumored to shop here every now and then, it’s good enough for us. One of the 1000 and one things to do while in Paris is a trip over the city’s Triangle d’Or, i.e. the Golden Triangle between the Champs Elysées, Avenue Montaigne and Avenue George V – at least window shopping wise. Luxury fashion labels congregate behind grandiose entrances, leaving you dragging your jaw past fabulous yet unaffordable window displays. French people even have an expression for that: lêche-vitrine, translating window licking in English. It’s that what you’ll be doing in Triangle d’Or a lot. If it’s not only for window licking, then it’s an eldorado for fashionistas and victims of conspicious consumption. Paris’ first multi-brand designer boutique is Montaigne Market with over sixty international designers, offering seductive prêt-à-porter. You can meet the beautiful ones at the Market during Paris Fashion Weeks even at night, sipping champagne and having witty small talks over the most exclusive pieces of the next season. But even if you can’t afford that Christopher Kane leather dress at 2000 Euros, you can still evaluate who’s hot in the world capital of cosmopolitan style, even if it’s through a peephole or a shop window, respectively.